This has always been the case: Comic book fans find any amount of mainstream attention to be wildly gratifying. And so I expect a lot of comic book fans will be going to The Grand Illusion this weekend to watch the documentary Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. That’s as it should be. After all: Morrison is the best mainstream comics writer in the business right now. His run on Batman is actually a fascinating, fresh take on a worn-out concept. (And in case you were wondering: Morrison is the exception to the rule.) And the documentary does a good enough job telling his story, with tons of interviews with comics professionals and friends, contextualizing Morrison’s history with the history of the comics industry. There’s not a lot of new information here; if you’ve read lengthy interviews with Morrison that have already been published—especially in The Comics Journal—you know just about all of this. But if you’re a hardcore comics fan, you’ll go anyway, because it’s always fun to see comics treated seriously in another medium.

So the question is: Should non-comics nerds go to this movie? No. I think less-than-avid fans would get lost and, frankly, it’s amateurish filmmaking all the way through. From the cheesy soundtrack to the poorly edited shots, it’s kind of a mess. But if you’re a comics nerd, you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to go see this movie in a theater packed with other comics nerds. It should be a fun night out.

6 replies on “The Best Documentary About a Comic Book Writer You Will See in Seattle in January (Probably)”

  1. Just picked up the first two hardcover volumes of Batman and Robin and was not impressed at all. I was expecting something along the lines off his collaboration with Quitely on All Star Superman (the best superhero comic of the past decade) but instead got some bullshit that included a darkest night crossover. Laaaaame.

  2. My real questions is: does this documentary cover that fact that almost everything this man writes gets shit on and retconned within a couple of years of publication (like his brilliant run on New X-Men in the early 00’s)?

  3. Morrison would be better if he would concentrate more on actually writing good stories and less on totally like, blowing your miiiiiiiiind maaaaaaaan.

  6. I saw it down in San Francisco a few months ago – it’s good! I highly recommend it for fans. The pacing is a little much – there are a LOT of talking heads, but it’s good stuff.

    Answered some questions I was curious about, like, what is the relationship between Morrison himself and Kingmob? And what the hell is going on in his Crisis series?

    A striking moment comes when Morrison recollects his mother taking him out in a field at night, pointing out the star Sirius, and …. well, you should find out for yourself. It explains a lot about him.

    For what it’s worth, my completely-non-comics-fan girlfriend gamely came to see it with me, and enjoyed it.

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